This is Zack Fuss. Today we are breaking down the largest privately-owned software business in Europe, Visma. Visma is a software company with over 15,000 employees offering accounting, payroll, and HR software products for customers across the Nordic, Benelux, and Baltic regions. Founded in Oslo in 1996, Visma grew organically and via acquisition of 178 companies. We're joined by Nic Humphries, the Senior Partner and Executive Chairman of Hg Capital, which is one of the leading software investors in Europe. Nic is intimately familiar with Visma, given Hg owns over 50% of the business and has been invested for over 17 years. Hg initially invested as part of a take-private transaction in 2006 at just a $450 million valuation and based upon the latest recap completed in December, today, the business is valued at over $21 billion. As part of this conversation, we discussed the business history, growth, and recent leadership transition. Please enjoy this breakdown of Visma. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, the modern research platform for leading investors. Tired of running your own expert calls to get up to speed on a company? Tegus lets you ramp faster and find answers to critical questions more efficiently than any alternative method. The gold standard for research, the Tegus platform delivers unmatched access to timely, qualitative insights through the largest and most differentiated expert call transcript database. With over 60,000 transcripts spanning 22,000 public and private companies, investors can accelerate their fundamental research process by discovering highly-differentiated and reliable insights that can’t be found anywhere else in the market. As a listener, drive your next investment thesis forward with Tegus for free at tegus.co/patrick. ----- Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss | @ReustleMatt | @domcooke Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes (00:00:00) Welcome to Business Breakdowns (00:02:44) First question - Introducing Visma and its operations (00:10:51) Identifying Visma's unique attributes in the payroll sector (00:13:32) Assessing Visma's current scale and potential for growth (00:17:45) Considering the shift to a cloud-native approach (00:20:49) Reflecting on key lessons from past errors (00:23:19) Strategies for scaling the business effectively (00:28:15) Weighing cash reinvestment against shareholder distributions (00:31:39) Øystein Moan's influence within the company (00:33:06) Deciding the right time for an IPO (00:39:23) Analyzing the risks facing Visma (00:41:22) Exploring Visma's competitive advantages

This is Matt Reustle. Today we are breaking down Live Oak Bank. Our guest is Stephen Vafier, the Founder of Storri Labs Capital Partners. Live Oak is a bank that received a charter right before the financial crisis. It does not have the a 100+ year histories of many of the banks that we know so well today, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and the other too-big-to-fail banks.  This is a new story with very interesting DNA in terms of how they built up this bank. They targeted specific industries and the SBA loan program and they had technology in their inception. Live Oak has done some unique things to build assets on the balance sheet to build equity in this bank and really build a name within a sector that is incredibly difficult to break into. This is an interesting case study on how you can think about out-dated industries, which seemingly have massive barriers to entry. Please enjoy this breakdown of Live Oak Bank. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus is the modern research platform for leading investors, and provider of Canalyst. Tired of calculating fully-diluted shares outstanding? Access every publicly-reported datapoint and industry-specific KPI through their database of over 4,000 driveable global models handbuilt by a team of sector-focused analysts, 35+ industry comp sheets, and Excel add-ins that let you use their industry-leading data in your own spreadsheets. Tegus’ models automatically update each quarter, including hard to calculate KPIs like stock-based compensation and organic growth rates, empowering investors to bypass the friction of sourcing, building and updating models. Make efficiency your competitive advantage and take back your time today. As a listener, you can trial Canalyst by Tegus for free by visiting tegus.co/patrick. ----- Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @JoinColossus | @patrick_oshag | @jspujji | @zbfuss | @ReustleMatt | @domcooke Show Notes (00:02:16) - (First question) - The unique market opportunity that the founders saw when starting this business (00:04:39) - How Live Oak differentiated its approach to make a more successful business model (00:06:03) - How they approached the SBA loan program differently (00:09:04) - The Live Oak sales strategy  (00:10:06) - Their strategy for trading partially guaranteed government-backed loans  (00:12:12) - Overcoming challenges to attract clients to specialized loans (00:15:44) - A brief history of Chip Mahan’s career (00:20:23) - Chip’s technology-centric approach without relying on physical locations (00:22:49) - Traditional banking security with high-upside ventures, contrasting with neo banks  (00:27:51) - The balance between the traditional lending business and technology-focused ventures (00:31:48) - How Live Oak intends to scale the business  (00:36:52) - How the surge in SBA programs during COVID impacted Live Oak (00:40:02) - Handling the effects of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse (00:42:32) - The strategy for deposit growth and how pivotal is it for the bank's competitiveness (00:46:13) - How Live Oak navigates threats from entities employing similar strategies  (00:53:36) - The significance of Chip Mahan's role and his influence on the organization's future  (00:56:43) - Potential risks that Live Oak faces (00:59:44) - Lessons learned from researching Live Oak